The Weight of Legacy

The question must have caught her uncle off-guard, as Anselm balked.

It hadn't been as much of a debate to ask this as the matter of Benedikt had been—with Thekla presumably busy dealing with the aftermath of exposing that she was expecting, on top of everything else, Anselm was really the only one of Beryl's remaining siblings who was old enough to even know much about what she wanted to know.

Alaric could have probably spoken to her about Beryl, but she also wanted to see how far she could push the topic, and maybe get some addition info on Katrina or even Kristian. That wasn't something the guy who'd been like one month old when Katrina died could provide.

"Your mother was…" Anselm still seemed at a loss for words. [The Way of the Clave] was a Skill she admittedly underutilized, but its nebulous feedback was something she'd always been put off by. It had its uses, certainly, but some things were difficult to interpret. For one, she couldn't tell if her uncle was hesitating because he didn't want to answer, or because he simply couldn't figure out where to start. "Beryl's the oldest of us, as you undoubtedly know. She was rebellious, or more accurately, she was the type to want to try everything herself regardless of what our parents said. It was always like she defaulted to not believing what anyone told her."

Malwine considered this. "She didn't trust people a lot?"

"In a sense? For as long as I remember, she had this wandering nature about her. She reminds me of Adelheid in some ways—minus the potential, of course," Anselm clarified. Malwine had to hold herself back from raising an eyebrow, as she knew for a fact that her mother would very much have fallen under the 'with potential' category, given her Affinity. "But she'd strike out on her own, often. By the time I was old enough to understand that, she did it so often that no one really cared."

Oh, wave take me. Malwine scowled. Of all the things she liked to blame on her mother for lack of an actual known culprit to blame, now it might turn out Beryl might actually have been at least part of the reason why no one would bat an eye when Adelheid disappeared for weeks at a time.

"Is that why Bernie doesn't pay attention to my sister?"

Anselm winced. "I'm not in a position to answer that. Bernadette has had… a difficult life. You'll probably hear of it once you're older, but some things, you shouldn't trouble yourself with. At the end of the day, you have a childhood to enjoy. You know, it was your mother of all people who said something like that, once. …Actually, perhaps we should talk about this. Just carefully."

"Oh?"

"Kristoffer—wherever he is now—has always been a bit like her. Nothing as brazen, but he always fancied himself an explorer, more so than any of us. When he was I don't know, ten?—I remember he decided he'd mount an expedition to find our mother. Your grandmother, though you wouldn't know of her."

Proving him wrong, Malwine sighed. "Katrina."

"…Yes," Anselm gave her an odd look, but proceeded. He was being surprisingly forthcoming, even if it was obvious that he was abridging absolutely everything. "One day, Father got a notification that she was dead and we were all in his custody now. That was it. We may have our differences," he paused, as if thinking better of saying whatever he'd been about to say. "I do not think he lied about that. But Kristoffer got it in him that he had what it took to look for her, and wanted to look around the estate."

She suppressed a shudder—from what she'd learned thanks to Veit, chances were Katrina had died near the estate. And a ten-year-old Kristoffer had suspected as much. "Why?"

"I know not. Anyhow, as I was saying—Beryl convinced him not to. She insisted Kristoffer was too young, too innocent. He shouldn't be doing anything that morbid. She promised to revisit the idea once he was older, but she never did. I admit it just occurred to me I almost just made that same mistake. Who knows?"

Malwine refrained from commenting on that.

Her uncle exhaled slowly, looking up to the side. As patient as she'd have to be while waiting for him to talk, he seemed unwilling to shut up now. "We were not that far apart in age, at the end of the day. But to me, your mother always felt… unknowable. Even as I grew older, it felt impossible to know what was going on in her head. She operated so differently to the rest of us that she was impossible to catch up to. By the time she reached Core Integration, Mother was dead, and Father was at odds with her."

That did pique Malwine's interest immediately. "Mother was at Core Integration?"

"Hollow core. Allegedly," Anselm clarified, with the tone of someone who wouldn't spent a single second actually believing she'd been a hollow core despite his earlier comment. "We were all unfortunate, unlike Adelheid. Despite what Mother had, we were all born mortal."

Malwine's gaze snapped up. She wasn't surprised by the implications of disbelief relating Beryl. Her mother herself could walk up to her and say she had a hollow core, and Malwine would simply ignore that as a falsehood. What caught her off-guard was Anselm stating Katrina wasn't mortal—outside of her own research and Veit's commentary, that topic seemed to be universally avoided. "What do you mean? About grandmother?"

Anselm bit his lip. She could tell by now that the topic annoyed him. Rather than direct that annoyance at her, though, he appeared to be taking this as an opportunity to vent. The idea of being this open with someone who was—as far as he could tell—a child was one of dubious wisdom, but she wasn't about to complain if it got her the knowledge she wanted.

Meaning, any new knowledge, at this point.

"Our mother, Katrina—she was a part of the party of a Champion named Zayden Owens. Champions are basically people summoned from other worlds, brought here by the Sai— actually, let's leave it at that. I'm sure your teacher will cover the topic at some point," Anselm showed his eagerness to explain things did indeed have a limit after all, shaking his head before continuing. "I have a lot of things I could say about that, but… Katrina had something called Affinities, which meant she had potential. Potential to go far, at that. Beryl and Katrina were not in the best of terms, and at times, I wonder if she blamed Mother for us being mortal. But beyond that, regardless of who may or may not be to blame, our father is mortal, but she was not. For six out of six children born to them, to all be mortal—those are outrageous odds."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

When she'd poked her uncle for answers, this had certainly not been where she'd expected things to go. A few of the tamer implications had been hard enough to process as it was, enough that she was doing lots of selective ignoring at the moment, but this? This threw her for a loop.

Devils, are you… accusing Katrina of somehow making everyone be born mortal?

That came out of the left field.

Gears were turning in Malwine's head. She knew she, herself, was theoretically capable of turning mortals into cultivators by giving them this fabled 'potential', in the form of Affinities. She hadn't been upfront to Veit about that ability of hers, but he had confirmed for her that neither gods nor Devils, nor anything that Existed, could ever remove something so quintessential. If you had power, if you had Affinities, they were yours forever. Proclivities were apparently fickler, but that wasn't truly relevant to her right now.

"What?" she asked, genuinely confused. "Are you saying my mother thought my grandmother made you all be born mortal?"

That might have been a bit too direct for the image she'd been trying to portray of herself, but she couldn't help it after the implied accusation there.

"No," her uncle denied it. And then he said something else. "Your mother didn't say that, but there are reasons why it's likely."

Hello? Elaborate?

Her uncle did no such thing, even after she actually spoke and repeated the ever-so-fruitful 'what?'. Instead he shook his head quietly, oblivious to her internal crisis.

"That doesn't sound like something that… Would a mother really do that?" Malwine asked, her voice quivering. The widow had been no stranger to maternal figures being pieces of shit, both as a concept and due to experience. Hell, even in this life, Bernie would never be winning herself any awards. But her guardian's actions never felt malicious. Misguided, yes, and downright stupid at worst, but while she would concede she didn't think Bernie was being a good mother to literally anyone, she didn't think the woman was outright terrible.

…Maybe that was the usual cognitive dissonance that formed towards family members at play. It was easier to downplay what closer relatives did, because outright labeling them bad people burned a lot of bridges, even if said labeling were to only occur within the confines of her mind. She couldn't deny Bernie was almost definitely a bad mother, but she also couldn't bring currently herself to state that as a fact aloud.

Now, for Katrina, and the things Anselm was implying. Malwine wasn't sure what to think. The truth of it was, her exposure to her grandmother had been limited to a trial. She didn't know Katrina, or what she had been like. To Malwine she was simply her grandmother, and someone who was resurrectable. That had felt like knowledge enough.

"There isn't really a set of things mothers 'really do', Malwine," her uncle told her. "Our mothers and fathers are people, and people are not perfect. You'd be wise to remember that."

"So even you aren't perfect," Malwine said in jest, hoping to lighten the mood at least minimally. "Right?"

"…Least of all me," Anselm gave her a faint smile that just struck her as the type of face someone made when trying to appease a child.

Now, on to the question she knew she'd loathe, but it had been inevitable ever since the conversation had taken this turn. "And my mother? …Was she bad too?"

"No," Anselm answered immediately. For once, he didn't seem to hesitate, though she was still quite far from calm about this entire thing.

"But grandmother was," Malwine said, not quite willing to phrase that as a question.

"Before any of us were born—before Zayden was slain—there was a fell settlement in the territory where we now live," Anselm's next words were such a blatant non-sequitur that Malwine couldn't keep her eyebrows down. "The fell are not people, not as we are, but it's close enough that certain matters become uncomfortable if you think too deeply about them. They don't have souls but they make homes and raise families, as far as I'm aware. It's uncomfortable," he took in a deep breath. "My point being, our parents were part of Zayden's group when they razed most of this territory to the ground. There are no traces of the fell settlement that used to be here, because they didn't leave any."

Malwine stared blankly at that. Even having known something had happened in the past, given what Veit told her about the signs of fell presence lingering about, she'd sort of just assumed this place was… just there. She hadn't put that much thought into it. But to hear the Champion Saint's party had wiped a settlement out, combined with the rest of Anselm's commentary, she was starting to have concerns that went beyond the tried and tested fact that Kristian was an ass.

This IS uncomfortable.

Her uncle had basically gone and implied it hadn't been a conflict so much as it had been a culling.

"…My grandparents are bad people. Got it."

Anselm let out a wry chuckle, devoid of mirth. Before she could react, he reached out and ruffled her hair, making this the second time in a month where someone had tried to display some measure of reassuring affection to her and only succeeded in annoying her.

"Father is violent—there is no one alive who can deny it. But Mother was a different matter," her uncle started to sound a bit wistful. "Katrina was strong-willed in her matters and strict with ours. She liked to pretend she was trying to help us succeed, despite that, and who knows—maybe she fooled herself."

Before Malwine could interject, Anselm continued. "I know Adelheid spoke to him—he keeps telling everyone about it. I would beg of you to dissuade her. Father is not someone you want to emulate. His is the type of danger that comes not from cruelty but from heartlessness. I have lived with him long enough to understand he doesn't consciously wish any of us ill. He cares in his own way. But he never has and likely never will understand the fact that everyone else sees him as a monster. Because he is."

This has… gone long past the point where it'd have been a nice conversation. Malwine found herself wishing she hadn't told Adelheid to stick around. Oh, who am I kidding. Bad as it is, I'm not sure if this is actually worse than the family massacre speech Hildegard gave her.

"Mother was… different. It was, still is, difficult to think of her as a cruel person, because she wasn't a cruel mother," her uncle was somehow not done yet. Again, he laughed wryly. "That's always the problem."

Anselm shook his head. "I apologize. I… perhaps not all of that was necessary. But you asked, and I think it might perhaps be for the best for you to know to be wary of what you may hear as you grow older. Be ready."

Malwine nodded along, suddenly eager to depart. Something told her she'd be mulling over this for the next day or week, at minimum. "I see. Thanks? I'm guessing that's it for bad people in our family that I should be careful of."

The next laugh he let out was much more concerning. "Now that… Some things should be left for when you're older."

That wasn't a fucking 'no'.

Absentmindedly, she eyed the family tree. Anselm claimed Beryl hadn't been bad, and the rest of the siblings always struck her as silly but generally alright. That left just one option, the one she knew the least about.

Damn. What's Otto done? Not that she could ask. As much as it pained her, off the top of her head, Malwine couldn't really think of an excuse why he knew about the secondborn son, and the question would likely come up if she mentioned it.

Just you wait. I'll find out someday.

Malwine could only hope the next heart-to-heart conversation she had with anyone about the family wouldn't involve various implicit accusations, though. The worst part was that while some of those implications didn't even sound mechanically possible within the system, with how earnest he came off, that just made her think she must have been missing something.

Unbidden, her thoughts went to the obit that still lingered in her inventory, and for the first time, her worries about just what kind of person she could bring back outweighed the thrill of fantasizing about that potential resurrection.